Biden to China: I fully understand your one-child policy

posted at 5:28 pm on August 22, 2011 by Allahpundit

Via the Standard, isn’t this guy supposed to be pro-choice? He does understand that the one-child policy is an actual policy, not a matter of Chinese couples cheerily “choosing” to keep their families small for the good of the motherland, yes?

I ask because, per Timothy Carney, you never know when Biden’s saying something outrageous out of bad intent or simply because he’s a moron.

What we ended up doing is setting up a system whereby we did cut by $1.2 trillion upfront, the deficit over the next 10 years. And we set up a group of senators that have to come up with another $1.2 to $1.7 trillion in savings or automatically there will be cuts that go into effect in January to get those savings. So the savings will be accomplished. But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that’s much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.

The manifest unsustainability of that 1:4 ratio is reason enough to second-guess it, but if math doesn’t float your boat, how about the fact that Chinese authorities forcibly sterilized 10,000 people in Guangdong Province just last year? No? How about forced abortions, then?

The officials gave Wei three injections in the lower abdomen. Contractions started the next afternoon, and continued for almost 16 hours. Her child was stillborn.

“I asked the doctor if it was a boy or girl,” Wei said. “The doctor said it was a boy. My friends who were beside me said the baby’s body was completely black. I felt desolate, so I didn’t look up to see the baby.”

Medical sources say fetuses aborted in this manner would have been dead for some time, so the tissue is necrotic and thus dark in color.

“The nurses dealt with the body like it was rubbish,” Wei said. “They wrapped it up in a black plastic bag and threw it in the trash.”

On the upside, at least it helped reduce carbon emissions. The grim punchline here is that, because of Chinese cultural preferences for boys over girls, the one-child policy has produced a male/female ratio so skewed that the only limit to how much mischief those lonely bachelors will end up causing is your imagination. If we’re lucky, most of that mischief will be directed internally. If not, then the U.S. military will be “second-guessing” this policy for decades. But such is the protocol of a “goodwill tour” that the VP would rather smile benignly at this barbarism than stay neutral. That’s what happens when your banker’s angry at you, I guess.

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One where ChiComs’ victims may speak of their “perceptions” much more freely. Look, I’m not upset with you, but with the ChiComs’ tasked with monitoring you, as well as with their bosses. However, you might be experiencing a bit of cultural reversal with a twist of encapsulated cultural marginality. Perfectly understandable.

One where ChiComs’ victims may speak of their “perceptions” much more freely. Look, I’m not upset with you, but with the ChiComs’ tasked with monitoring you, as well as with their bosses. However, you might be experiencing a bit of cultural reversal with a twist of encapsulated cultural marginality. Perfectly understandable.

Would it be better if the population exploded and hundreds of millions of tots ended up dying of starvation and disease in abject poverty?

DarkCurrent on August 22, 2011 at 7:30 PM

I don’t see how it’s an either or scenario, nor would I agree that normal family sizes would necessarily mean millions would end up dying of starvation, etc. Generally it’s populations that are unbalanced like ours is now with more retiring than working that truly creates problems.

And I trust you, Dark, but when you already accept that the media is government controlled, I don’t see how you can be so certain that things aren’t occurring just because they’re against the law. I’ve heard a lot of stories about babies in black trash bags. It’s anecdotal, sure, but when the media is government controlled, I’m not sure how else information like that would get out. You rightfully distrust anything listed as being that official.

As to your comment earlier about girls also being undervalued daily in America, I’m not sure I see what you could be alluding to. There isn’t a significant gender imbalance in this country. If anything, I believe we have more women.

I don’t see how it’s an either or scenario, nor would I agree that normal family sizes would necessarily mean millions would end up dying of starvation, etc. Generally it’s populations that are unbalanced like ours is now with more retiring than working that truly creates problems.

It is an either or scenario. There’s only so much water and arable land available and agricultural productivity in China still lags far behind the US. This is a country with already 4 times as many people and a much less developed rural infrastructure.

And I trust you, Dark, but when you already accept that the media is government controlled, I don’t see how you can be so certain that things aren’t occurring just because they’re against the law. I’ve heard a lot of stories about babies in black trash bags. It’s anecdotal, sure, but when the media is government controlled, I’m not sure how else information like that would get out. You rightfully distrust anything listed as being that official

.

I don’t rely on the local media. I’m just saying I’ve never seen such things or heard them reported from people I know, including family members. I have local friends who are very willing to speak freely about things they don’t like in China, but these particular sorts of atrocities don’t come up. I do believe they are quite rare these days.

As to your comment earlier about girls also being undervalued daily in America, I’m not sure I see what you could be alluding to. There isn’t a significant gender imbalance in this country. If anything, I believe we have more women.

I’m not sure I get the distinction between abortion and living children, but I’ve never seen a child tossed into a trash can in China (nor in the US).

There’s not one, but your comment was about the (il)legality gender-based abortions and mine was about the actual killing of girl children, not about the legalities.

It seems you hold to some simple caricature of Chinese as inhuman baby-killing monsters.

DarkCurrent on August 22, 2011 at 7:52 PM

It seems you underestimate me, or read things that aren’t there. I’m just stating the facts as I perceive them to be based on years of reading.

I am aware that you’re there and I’m not, so I will grant that it is possible that things are better than the bad old days. However, I don’t believe it is the case that the common practice of getting rid of girl children has disappeared from China, no matter your lack of personal experience with same. Nor do I believe that the practice of forced sterilization/abortion has either.

It seems you underestimate me, or read things that aren’t there. I’m just stating the facts as I perceive them to be based on years of reading.

I am aware that you’re there and I’m not, so I will grant that it is possible that things are better than the bad old days.

Fair enough.

However, I don’t believe it is the case that the common practice of getting rid of girl children has disappeared from China, no matter your lack of personal experience with same. Nor do I believe that the practice of forced sterilization/abortion has either.

hillbillyjim on August 22, 2011 at 9:17 PM

I think the characterization of getting rid of girl children as a ‘common practice’ is inaccurate. Yes, it happens. It probably happens more in China than in the US I’m sure. But it also happens in many other countries, including democratic US allies like India. In all cases it should be condemned and prevented.

Among those being held was the 68-year-old father of Huang Ruifeng, who has three daughters. Mr Huang said: “Several days ago a village official called me and asked me or my wife to return for the surgery. Otherwise they would take away my father.” He said that he was too busy to go and did not have confidence in village medical techniques. In any case, he wanted his wife to give birth to a son first.

An official at the Puning Population and Family Planning Bureau, who declined to be identified, told The Global Times: “It’s not uncommon for family planning authorities to adopt some tough tactics.”

In Puning county couples with illegal children and their relatives who apply for permits to build a house are rejected. Illegal children are refused residency registration, a penalty that denies them access to healthcare and education.

Illegal children are refused residency registration, a penalty that denies them access to healthcare and education.

And they aren’t even illegal aliens.

unclesmrgol on August 22, 2011 at 9:38 PM

This is the actual legal enforcement method for the population control policy. Additional children above quota (the quota varies depending on demographics) are not entitled to state-funded education or healthcare.

The parents need to pay for private education and healthcare. They aren’t forbidden from being educated or receiving healthcare, but the parents need to pay for it out of pocket.

This is a country with already 4 times as many people and a much less developed rural infrastructure.

Sure but money never goes bad, and they clearly have a lot more of that than we do. Actual goods aren’t really an issue when you can pay for what you need.

I don’t rely on the local media. I’m just saying I’ve never seen such things or heard them reported from people I know, including family members. I have local friends who are very willing to speak freely about things they don’t like in China, but these particular sorts of atrocities don’t come up. I do believe they are quite rare these days.

I would hope so, but why would anyone you know, know about this stuff unless it somehow directly impacts them? There’s a lot of people in China. If it’s only happening to thousands, it’s still barely happening to anyone.

That comment was about babies generally.

DarkCurrent on August 22, 2011 at 8:54 PM

So, about abortion in general? I’d still be interested in the stats, honestly. I do feel there are more incentives for it in China.

“A tradition of infanticide and abandonment, especially of females, existed in China before the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949,” note Zeng et al.. (“Causes and Implications,” p. 294.) According to Ansley J. Coale and Judith Banister, “A missionary (and naturalist) observer in [China in] the late nineteenth century interviewed 40 women over age 50 who reported having borne 183 sons and 175 daughters, of whom 126 sons but only 53 daughters survived to age 10; by their account, the women had destroyed 78 of their daughters.” (Coale and Banister, “Five Decades of Missing Females in China,” Demography, 31: 3 [August 1994], p. 472.)

culture dictates that when a girl marries she leaves her family and becomes part of her husband’s family. For this reason Chinese peasants have for many centuries wanted a son to ensure there is someone to look after them in their old age — having a boy child is the best pension a Chinese peasant can get. Baby girls are even called “maggots in the rice” ..

The Chinese government appeared to recognize the linkage by allowing families in rural areas (where anti-female bias is stronger) a second child if the first was a girl. Nonetheless, in September 1997, the World Health Organization’s Regional Committee for the Western Pacific issued a report claiming that “more than 50 million women were estimated to be ‘missing’ in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing’s population control program that limits parents to one child.” (See Joseph Farah, “Cover-up of China’s gender-cide”, Western Journalism Center/FreeRepublic, September 29, 1997.) Farah referred to the gendercide as “the biggest single holocaust in human history.”

more than 50 million women were estimated to be ‘missing’ in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing’s population control program that limits parents to one child.

The Speaker of the House responds to Joe Biden’s apparent empathy for China’s one-child policy: “I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state. I hope and trust that the Vice President didn’t actually say what has been reported, and that a correction or clarification from the White House will be forthcoming. The Obama administration should be focusing on jobs for the American people, not encouraging foreign governments to utilize abortion as a means of population and deficit control.”

Familiarity breeds contempt? It seems that no one despises Catholic doctrine as much as Catholics. The number of examples is too great to list here, but simply consider the Catholic and yet pro-abortion Democrats, not to mention their non-Catholic “Christian” fellow Democrats.

China is a big place. What happens in one place may not happen in another place or every place. That does not make it any less true. A lot depends on the local officials. On the other hand, make them look bad and expect to suffer the consequences.

There are more than a few Democrats, disguising themselves as concerned environmentalists, that would wish to pick and choose who can be born, who should die (all except criminals) and who should be aborted. Some of the thinking is based on politics (kill the rich white babies), some on racism (kill the poor black babies). It is never kill themselves.
Biden knows everything about everything.

The manifest unsustainability of that 1:4 ratio is reason enough to second-guess it, but if math doesn’t float your boat, how about the fact that Chinese authorities forcibly sterilized 10,000 people in Guangdong Province just last year?

The only thing Catholic about Notre Dame is the name. The religious icons and chapels on campus are just traditions they have to put up with. They mean nothing. It’s like Columbia, but without the powerhouse football team.

I strongly believe in state’s rights here in America. Thus, I completely support the rights of nations on most issues of domestic policy. Biden is right. We don’t have any business commenting on China’s one-child policy.

There is a short easy answer to what do all the bachelors mean for China’s future. China has had more males than females for centuries. Look to Chinese tradition and history for how it has been resolved. Who the hell are we to tell an overpopulated country which had always had something like its current sex ratio that they need to change? It’s not Conservative to tell another country that they have to overturn centuries of tradition.

By the way, are we also concerned that the historical trends that created our country also created huge numbers of spinsters? Or are we merely embarking on some feminist man-hating screed about China’s demographics?

I don’t know where you are, but my ex husband and his family immigrated from Shanghai. My mother-in-law got pregnant after she had my husband (so this would have been around 1980), and the government DID force her to have an abortion, and they DID force her to have an IUD implanted. (which later caused her cancer.)

She certainly did not describe this as an event that was “Rare” or unheard of. She described it as being the law and just accepted.

I don’t know where you are, but my ex husband and his family immigrated from Shanghai. My mother-in-law got pregnant after she had my husband (so this would have been around 1980), and the government DID force her to have an abortion, and they DID force her to have an IUD implanted. (which later caused her cancer.)

She certainly did not describe this as an event that was “Rare” or unheard of. She described it as being the law and just accepted.

CambellBrown on August 23, 2011 at 9:05 AM

I’m in Shanghai circa 2011. Admittedly I never saw it before 1990.

Such things probably happened much more frequently back then, no doubt.

China expert Steven W. Mosher (of the Population Research Institute) wrote “A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy” (1993, HarperPerennial). He tells about the struggle of Chi An and her husband to keep their baby, despite formidable government pressure.

One often overlooked result of China’s one-child policy is the practice of incestual marriage. Aware of the shortage of women that has resulted from the male-favoring one-child policy, some families are quietly finding wives for their sons among their daughters or cousins. Although they know it is wrong, they are desperate to get their young men married.

Please Mr. Biden’s Bishop, excommunicate this fellow. His claim to be a Catholic is a scandal.

Mason on August 22, 2011 at 5:30 PM

Thank you for the comment. That’s just about what I was thinking, except to that I thought, what kind of Catholic can he possibly be???? Well, obviously not a practicing Catholic, or one who knows the Catechism very well…. if at all…

The grim punchline here is that, because of Chinese cultural preferences for boys over girls, the one-child policy has produced a male/female ratio so skewed that the only limit to how much mischief those lonely bachelors will end up causing is your imagination.

Mrs Crazy Legs and I are deep into the process of adopting from China. I believe the ratio of boys to girls is something like 120 boys for every 100 girls.

Strange that I’ve never met any Chinese who considered it ‘unlucky to be cursed with a female child’, nor have I read any such in the classics.

Where did you get that from? A fortune cookie?

The fact is that there is a STRONG cultural preference for boys (and PERFECT boys – if you have anything outside of the norm, watch out). Why? Because the when the oldest son grows up, he is is expected to take care of his parents (and their parents) in their old age (this is actually what Biden was talking about in his bull-in-a-china-shop, idiotic way). Girls are expected to move in with their husbands and care for HIS parents.

So if you have a family that already has a girl, and then has another girl… what then? Do you pay (and can you afford) the obnoxious tax penalties to have that boy who will support you in your old age? Or do you abandon your second baby girl (because there are no “safe haven” laws they can’t bring them to an orphanage or police station) and try for a boy?

It’s not right, and I am not excusing what Greasy Joe said, but for you to say that it doesn’t exist is beyond naive.

This is the actual legal enforcement method for the population control policy. Additional children above quota (the quota varies depending on demographics) are not entitled to state-funded education or healthcare.

The parents need to pay for private education and healthcare. They aren’t forbidden from being educated or receiving healthcare, but the parents need to pay for it out of pocket.

DarkCurrent on August 22, 2011 at 9:50 PM

That much is reasonable. It should be implemented here for all children and adults except for deeply impoverished, severely disabled and aged that don’t have extended families that could pay if they wanted. If even their cousins or grandparents don’t want to save them, why should anyone else?

Face it, counting up to one may be the only thing everyone can agree Biden fully understands.

And he must have been looking for an applause line, after seeing those stoney Chicoms doing the Asian cultural equivalent of shaking their heads and rolling their eyes when they heard the translations of everything else he’s said on the trip.

In Puning county couples with illegal children and their relatives who apply for permits to build a house are rejected. Illegal children are refused residency registration, a penalty that denies them access to healthcare and education.

A child is “illegal” in China if he/she has an older sibling.

If you have a big brother, Big Brother hates you.

The grim punchline here is that, because of Chinese cultural preferences for boys over girls, the one-child policy has produced a male/female ratio so skewed that the only limit to how much mischief those lonely bachelors will end up causing is your imagination. If we’re lucky, most of that mischief will be directed internally. If not, then the U.S. military will be “second-guessing” this policy for decades.

The Georgetown basketball team is already second-guessing this policy.